16  The Two Resurrections  (John 5:25–29)

“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.” (5:25–29)

To the age-old question, “If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:14), the Bible answers emphatically, “Yes.” All people, both believers and unbelievers, will one day be raised from the dead. Everyone will live forever, consciously and individually.

For the believer, there are two aspects to that resurrection—spiritual and physical. Spiritually, Christians are resurrected when God imparts salvation to their previously dead souls. Although they were dead in their sins (Eph. 2:1), they now enjoy new life in Christ (v. 5; cf. Rom. 6:4).

Physically, believers are confident that, even though their earthly bodies will eventually wear out, they will one day receive resurrection bodies that will endure forever. They will be given these new bodies when “the Lord Jesus Christ … will transform the body of [their] humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:20–21). As a result, believers will be prepared to enjoy resurrection life in the Millennium in sinless perfection, as well as be fitted for eternal existence in the new heavens and the new earth (cf. Rev. 21–22).

The Bible teaches that unbelievers will also experience a physical resurrection. But, because they never experienced spiritual resurrection, they will be raised to face final sentencing before the Great White Throne. In keeping with their condemnation, their eternal resurrection bodies will be suited for their eternal punishment in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:11–15).

The truth of resurrection is repeated throughout the Scriptures, beginning in the book of Genesis. As he was about to sacrifice his son Isaac, “Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you’” (Gen. 22:5). Confident that both he and Isaac would return from the sacrifice, Abraham was willing to kill his son because he knew “that God is able to raise people even from the dead” (Heb. 11:17–19), and would do so, if it was necessary to keep His word.

Abraham’s faith is mirrored by other Old Testament saints. Answering his own question, “If a man dies, will he live again?” Job affirmed, “All the days of my struggle I will wait until my change comes” (Job 14:14). Later, he amplified his belief in the resurrection of the body:

Daniel similarly noted that “those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2). And God Himself, through the prophet Hosea, asked rhetorically, “Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? O Death, where are your thorns? O Sheol, where is your sting?” (Hos. 13:14; cf. 1 Cor. 15:55). New Testament passages such as Matthew 22:29–32, John 11:24, Acts 24:15, and Hebrews 11:35 also allude to the Old Testament teaching on the resurrection.

Building on that foundation, the New Testament gives further insight into the truth of literal, bodily resurrection. In Luke 14:14 the Lord spoke of “the resurrection of the righteous,” while in John 6:39 He declared, “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day” (cf. vv. 40, 44, 54). Before raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus proclaimed, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies” (11:25).

The apostles also preached the resurrection. Acts 4:2 records that the Jewish authorities were “greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.” Paul boldly announced the doctrine of the resurrection to the skeptical Greek philosophers in Athens (Acts 17:18, 32). While standing before the Sanhedrin, he “began crying out in the Council, ‘Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; I am on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead!’” (Acts 23:6; cf. 24:21).

The epistles continue to expand the biblical teaching regarding the resurrection of the body. Paul devoted an entire chapter, 1 Corinthians 15, to defending that vital doctrine. In verse 21 he wrote, “For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.” In his second inspired letter to the Corinthians, Paul reminded them, “We know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1). To the Philippians, as noted earlier, he declared that Jesus Christ “will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory” (Phil. 3:21; cf. v. 11). At the Rapture, “the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess. 4:16). The apostle John also had the future resurrection of believers in mind when he wrote, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2).

In the previous section (vv. 17–24), Jesus startled and outraged His opponents by claiming to be God, and thus exempt from their man-made Sabbath restrictions. His claim, in large part, was built on two key realities: that He had the authority to give life, and that He had the authority to judge (vv. 21–22). In verse 24, He showed how those divine prerogatives affect sinners: those who believe in Him receive eternal life, while those who reject Him will be judged. Verses 25–29 further illustrate those truths, presenting both the spiritual resurrection of believers and the physical resurrection that awaits everyone.

SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION

“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself;” (5:25–26)

The discussions of both the spiritual and physical resurrections may be divided into three subpoints: the persons resurrected, the power that resurrected them, and the purpose for their resurrection.

THE PERSONS

“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” (5:25)

The solemn phrase amen, amen (truly, truly) introduces an emphatic, unarguable declaration by Jesus. He began with the seemingly paradoxical statement an hour is coming and now is. The hour of the believers’ resurrection now is in the sense that when they “were dead in [their] trespasses and sins … [God] made [them] alive together with Christ, ‣ and raised [them] up with Him” (Eph. 2:1, 5–6; cf. Col. 2:13). Yet the hour is still coming in the sense that the resurrection of their physical bodies is yet future (1 Cor. 15:35–54; Phil. 3:20–21).

The already/not yet sense of the phrase may also be understood in another way. While Christ was present, He offered spiritual life to all who would heed His words (6:37; Matt. 7:24–27; cf. John 14:6). Yet the full expression of the new era He inaugurated would not come until the day of Pentecost (14:17). Both during Christ’s earthly ministry (e.g., 4:39–42, 53), and in the fullness of the Spirit’s ministry after Pentecost, the spiritually dead who responded to the voice of the Son of God would live in the Spirit (cf. Rom. 8:1–11).

The New Testament frequently describes unbelievers as those who are spiritually dead. Paul charged the Romans to “present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead” (Rom. 6:13). He reminded the Ephesians that in their unregenerate state they were “dead in [their] trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1, 5; cf. Matt. 8:22). Later in that epistle the apostle expressed the gospel invitation, “For this reason it says, ‘Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you’” (Eph. 5:14). To the Colossians he wrote, “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions” (Col. 2:13). The apostle John also described salvation as having “passed out of death into life” (1 John 3:14).

To be spiritually dead is to be insensible to the things of God and totally unable to respond to Him (cf. 1 Cor. 2:14; 2 Cor. 4:3–4). Paul vividly described it as walking “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience … [living] in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and [being] by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:2–3). Spiritual death, according to the nineteenth-century Scottish commentator John Eadie,

That Christ came to give eternal life to the spiritually dead is a central theme in John’s gospel (1:4; 3:15–16, 36; 4:14; 5:39–40; 6:27, 33, 35, 40, 47–48, 51, 54; 8:12; 10:10, 28; 11:25; 14:6; 17:2–3; 20:31).

THE POWER

“For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself;” (5:26)

The Son can give life (v. 21) because, like the Father, He has life in Himself. No one can give to others what he himself lacks; thus no sinful human being can generate for himself eternal life, nor impart it to anyone else. God alone possesses it, and He grants it through His Son to whomever He wills.

Those who deny the deity of Christ twist Jesus’ statement that the Father gave life to the Son into an admission of His own creatureliness and inferiority to the Father. Such is not the case, however. John had already stated in the prologue to his gospel that the Son possessed life in Himself from all eternity (1:4). Again, it must be affirmed that when He became a man, our Lord voluntarily gave up the independent use of His divine attributes (Phil. 2:6–7; cf. John 5:19, 30;8:28). But the Father granted Him the authority to give life (both physical and spiritual) even during the self-limiting condescension of His earthly ministry.

THE PURPOSE

“those who hear will live.” (5:256)

Those who experience spiritual resurrection will receive abundant (10:10), everlasting life. The Lord was not, of course, teaching that everyone who listens to a gospel presentation will be saved (cf. Rom. 10:9–10). It is only those who hear in the sense of true faith and obedience to the gospel who will live. In other words, those who have savingly heard will respond in repentance and belief. “My sheep hear My voice,” Jesus declared, “and I know them, and they follow Me” (10:27). To Pilate He affirmed, “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice” (18:37). In the Lord’s letter to the churches in Revelation, each ends with the exhortation, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22). That statement identifies believers as those who have both the spiritual faculty and duty to respond to divine revelation. In contrast, the lost do not savingly hear Christ’s voice; they do not understand or obey it (8:43, 47; 12:47; 14:24), and hence will not live spiritually.

THE PHYSICAL RESURRECTION

“and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.” (5:27–29)

As with the authority to give life, the Father also gave the incarnate and submissive Son the authority to execute judgment. Christ received that authority because He is the Son of Man. As God in human flesh, a man “who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15), Jesus is uniquely qualified to be mankind’s judge. The phrase Son of Man, Jesus’ favorite designation of Himself, derives from Daniel’s messianic description of the Son of Man as the one who “was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:14). Since He is the God-man who entered fully into human life, experience, and temptation (Heb. 2:14–18; 4:14–16), Jesus can be the ultimate judge of all mankind.

THE PERSONS

“Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs” (5:28a)

The unbelieving Jews were astonished and outraged at Jesus’ bold claim to be the giver of spiritual life and the ultimate judge of all men. But the Lord was about to make another shocking claim. Rebuking them for their unbelief—that they would marvel at His teachings—Jesus continued by revealing another truth that astounded them: that He would one day raise the dead from their graves. As He did with the spiritual resurrection (v. 25), Jesus said that the hour of bodily resurrection is coming. But unlike the spiritual resurrection, He did not say that there is a present aspect of that reality. The resurrection of all who are in the tombs is still future. At that time, the souls of the righteous dead, now in heaven with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:6–8), and of the wicked dead, now in torment in Hades (Luke 16:22–23), will be given resurrected bodies fit for eternity.

Some argue from this text that the resurrection of both the righteous and unrighteous takes place at the same time. But while Jesus spoke here of the resurrection in general, He did not describe one general resurrection. On the contrary, in verse 29 He clearly distinguished between the resurrection of life and the resurrection of judgment. He made that same distinction in Luke 14:14, where He spoke of the resurrection of the righteous, implying that it is a distinct event. Revelation 20:4–6 also mentions two resurrections: the first consists of the righteous dead before the Millennium, and the second of the unrighteous dead for the Great White Throne judgment at the end of the Millennium. (For a detailed exposition of Revelation 20:4–6, see Revelation 12–22, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary [Chicago: Moody, 2000], 236ff.; Robert L. Thomas, Revelation 8–22: An Exegetical Commentary [Chicago: Moody, 1995], 412ff.)

The Bible teaches that the dead are raised in a specific sequence, not all at once:

The adjective tagma (“order” or “turn”) stresses that the dead are raised at different times: “Christ the first fruits,” “those who are Christ’s at His coming,” and the rest at “the end”—the consummation of all things when the wicked (the only ones not already mentioned) will be resurrected. The adjectives epeita (“after that”) and eita (“then”) almost always describe chronological (as opposed to logical) sequences of events.

Those who belong to Christ will be raised in connection with His coming. The believers of the church age (from Pentecost to the Rapture) will be raised at the Rapture (1 Thess.4:16), and the Old Testament saints, along with those saved during the Tribulation, at the end of the Tribulation (Rev. 20:4; cf. Dan. 12:2). Although Scripture does not explicitly mention them, believers who die during the Millennium will presumably receive their resurrection bodies immediately.

THE POWER

“will hear His voice, and will come forth;” (5:28b–29a)

Jesus did not delineate the order of the resurrection in this passage because He was not concerned here with chronology, but with revealing His divine power. This time the phrase hear His voice does not describe the effectual hearing of faith as in verse 25, but refers to the sovereign command of Christ. At His charge, the bodies of everyone who ever lived will come back to life. It is no wonder, then, that the apostle Paul longed to “know Him and the power of His resurrection” (Phil. 3:10).

THE PURPOSE

“those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.” (5:296)

The final resurrection will usher believers into the glories and joys of eternal life, and bring unbelievers to the endless suffering of eternal judgment. By characterizing believers as those who did the good deeds and unbelievers as those who committed the evil deeds Jesus was not teaching that salvation is by works. Throughout His ministry, Jesus clearly taught that salvation “is the work of God, that [people] believe in Him whom He has sent” (6:29; cf. Isa. 64:6; Rom. 4:2–4; 9:11; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8–9; 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 3:5). Good works are simply the evidence of salvation; Jesus called them “fruit” in Luke 6:43–45. Those who believe in the Son will as a result do good deeds (3:21; Eph. 2:10; James 2:14–20), while those who reject the Son will be characterized by evil deeds (3:18–19).

While works do not save, they do provide the basis for divine judgment. Scripture teaches that God judges people based on their deeds (Ps. 62:12; Isa. 3:10–11; Jer. 17:10; 32:19; Matt. 16:27; Gal. 6:7–9; Rev. 20:12; 22:12), because those deeds manifest the condition of the heart. Thus Jesus said, “The mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart” (Matt. 12:34). Later in Matthew’s gospel He taught that “the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders” (15:18–19). In Luke 6:45 Jesus told His hearers, “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil.” The apostle Paul also taught that people’s actions reflect their inner nature. To the Romans he wrote,

A few chapters later, Paul made it clear that those who attain to the resurrection of the righteous do not do so by their own merits, but by means of their union with Jesus Christ through faith:

Thus good deeds reveal the presence or absence of salvation, but do not produce it. They are its effect, not its cause.

The importance of the doctrine of the resurrection cannot be overstated: without it, there is no Christian faith. Writing to the Corinthians, who were wavering on the doctrine of the resurrection, Paul made it clear that

The apostle’s great hope, as it is of all believers, was to “attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:11), a reference to the resurrection of the righteous. He understood the truth that “blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years” (Rev. 20:6). And he knew that such a resurrection was attainable only through faith in Jesus Christ (cf. Rom. 6:4–5).

Concluding his magnificent chapter on the resurrection, Paul wrote, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58). The doctrine of the resurrection provides hope for the future that energizes the Christian’s life and service to God in the present.